Ubiquitous remote access to services, application programs and data has become commonplace as a result of the growth and availability of broadband and wireless network access. Remote access to application programs may be provided using a mobile device connected to a server computer via a computer network. Use of wireless handheld devices such as, for example, IPHONE, ANDROID, and IPAD has rapidly increased over the last couple of years to the extent that now many own at least one wireless handheld device. State of the art wireless mobile technology enables use of small wireless handheld devices to access the Internet and interact with various types of application programs.
Most computer applications used in, for example, large businesses, government organizations, and hospitals are still legacy mainframe computer applications run on a mainframe computer network. The original terminals have been replaced by Personal Computers (PCs) and terminal emulators enabling the PC user to interact with the mainframe computer application. However, to provide mobile devices with remote access to such programs, it is generally required that the source code of the mainframe computer application and/or the terminal emulator is modified in order to create an appropriate interface for the mobile device to interact with the legacy application. This can be expensive, time consuming and difficult to accomplish.